Family Conversations from Beyond the Grave - The Suicide of an AtheistMr. J.B.D… was an educated man saturated to the highest degree of
materialistic ideas, believing in neither his soul nor God. He deliberately
drowned two years ago. He was evoked following the request of
one of his relatives.
1. Evocation – A. I suffer. I am condemned.
2. We were asked to call you by one of your relatives who wanted to
know about your fate. Could you tell us if the evocation is pleasing
or painful to you? – A. It is painful.
3. Was your death voluntary? – A. Yes.
Observation: The spirit shows extreme difficulty to write. The
writing is large, irregular, convulsive and almost unintelligible.
He showed rage in the beginning, tore the paper off and broke
the pencil.
4. Calm down. We will pray for you. – A. I am forced to believe in
God.
5. What has led you to destroy your life? – A. Boredom with a hopeless
life.
Observation: Suicide is understandable if life is hopeless. One
wants to escape unhappiness at any price. With Spiritism, however,
the future unfolds and hope is warranted. Suicide then makes
no sense; we say even more, one recognizes that it is not possible
to escape any tribulation through this path only to find another
one hundred times worse. That is why Spiritism has already saved
so many victims from a voluntary death. Are those who look for
a moral and philosophical objective in Spiritism wrong, are they
dreamers? Guiltier are those who strive to promote the desperate
idea that everything ends with this life, the idea that is a source of
so many crimes and evils, and that it is conveyed through the use
of scientific fallacies and supposedly in the name of reason. They
will be responsible not only for their own errors, but for all the
evils which they have been the cause.
6. You wanted to escape the tribulations of life. Were you successful?
Are you better now? – A. Why does the nothingness not exist?
7. Could you kindly describe your actual situation, the best you
can? – A. I suffer for being forced to believe in everything that I
denied. My soul is like a raging fire; it is horribly tormented.
8. Where did you take your materialistic ideas from when alive? –
A. I was bad in another existence and my spirit was condemned
to suffer the torments of doubt during my life. Hence, I killed
myself.
Observation: There is a whole order of ideas here. We often
wonder how there can be anyone so materialistic having passed
through the spiritual world already we should have better intuition.
Well then, it is precisely such intuition that is denied to
certain spirits, as a punishment, proud spirits who have retained their pride and did not repent. We must not forget that the Earth
is a place of atonement. That is why there are so many bad spirits
incarnated here.
9. When you were drowning, what did you think would happen to
you? What were your thoughts at that point? – A. None. It was
nothing to me. Later I saw that I would still suffer a lot, since my
penalties were not over yet.
10. Now are you convinced about the existence of God, about the
soul and a future life? – A. Oh! I am terribly tormented by that!
11. Have you met your wife and brother again? – A. Oh! No!
12. Why not? – A. Why should we be together again in our torments?
We are exiled in misfortune; we should be united in happiness.
Pity on me!
13. Would you like to see your brother again? We could call him to
be with you. – A. No, no. I am in such a bad shape.
14. Why don’t you want us to call him? – A. He is not happy either.
15. You are afraid of his presence. However, wouldn’t he make you
feel better? – A. No. Later.
16. Your relative asks if you were present at your funerals and if you
were happy with what he did on that occasion. – A. Yes.
17. Would you like to say something to him? – A. That you can pray
a little for me.
18. It seems that in the social circles that you had once attended,
some people shared the same opinion you had in your lifetime;
do you have something to say about this? – A. Ah! The misery!
May they believe in another life! It is all I can wish them for their
happiness. If they could understand my sad situation they would
give serious thoughts to that.
Evocation of his brother who professed the same ideas but did not
commit suicide. Although unhappy, he is calmer. His writing is
clear and intelligible.
19. Evocation. – A. I hope the picture of our suffering may be useful
to you, persuading you that there is another life in which we atone
for our faults and disbeliefs!
20. Do you and your brother who we have just evoked see one another?
– A. No. He runs away from me.
21. You are more composed than he is. Could you give us a more
accurate description of your sufferings? – A. Doesn’t your selfesteem,
your pride suffer on Earth when are you are forced to
acknowledge your own mistakes? Doesn’t it cause revolt to your
spirit when you have to humiliate yourself before someone that
demonstrates that you are wrong? Then! What do you think
happens to a spirit that spent his whole life persuaded that there
is nothing beyond his ideas and that he is right against everyone
else? When such a spirit is suddenly faced by the shinning truth
he feels annihilated, humiliated. Then the feelings of remorse
occur for having denied for such a long time the existence of
such a good and indulgent God. It is an unbearable condition;
there is no peace, no rest; there will only be tranquility when
the sacred grace of God will finally touch him, because pride
immensely grasps our poor spirit entirely wrapping around it,
and it will take a long time to unwrap this fatal garment. It is
only by the prayers of our brothers that can help us to get rid
of it.
22. Do you mean your living brothers or the spirits? – A. One and
the other.
23. While we talked with your brother one of the persons present
here prayed for him. Was that prayer useful to him? – A. It will
not be lost. He may refuse it now but it will come back to him
when he is in a better state to receive this panacea.
The result of these two evocations was passed on to the person
who requested them. We then received the following answer:
“You cannot imagine, Sir, the good produced by the evocation
of my father-in-law and my uncle. We recognized them
perfectly well. The writing of the first one, in particular, was
very similar to the one he used when alive, it was even better
than the last few months he spent with us; his writing was
shaky and illegible. We find the same writing of the letters, in
particular d, f, o, p, q and t. As for the words, expressions and
style, these are even more remarkable. The analogy is perfect to
us except with respect to his better understanding of God, the
soul and eternity that he formerly denied so vehemently. We
are then perfectly convinced of the identity. God shall be even
more glorified by our belief in Spiritism, and our brothers,
spirits and living ones, will become better. The identity of his
brother is no less evident. We acknowledge a huge difference
between the atheist and the believer, and the marks of character,
style and expressions. One word in particular has shocked
us: panacea. He used that word all the time, with everybody.
I showed both communications to several people who were
shocked by their veracity. However, the incredulous, those
who share the opinion that my two relatives had, wanted
more categorical answers, like: that Mr. D… for example,
precisely describe the place where he was buried, the place
where he drowned, how it happened, etc. In order to satisfy
and convince them could you address the following questions
to them: Where and how the suicide took place? For how
long had his body been under water? Where was his body
found? Where was it buried? What was the civil or religious
procedure during the funerals, etc.?
I kindly ask you Sir to request more categorical answers to
these essential points to those who still have doubt. I am convinced about the immense benefit that this will have. I
made the arrangements necessary to have this letter delivered
to you tomorrow, Friday, so that you can evoke the spirit in
the session that takes place that day at the Society, etc.”
We reproduced this letter for the aspect of identity that it establishes.
We add our response below for the instruction of persons
who are not familiarized with the communications from beyond
the grave.
“…The questions that you would like to have sent to the spirit
of your father-in-law are certainly praiseworthy whose intention is
to convince the incredulous, but to you there doesn’t seem to be
any mixed feelings of doubt and curiosity. However, a more profound
knowledge of Spiritism would have led you to understand
that those questions are unnecessary.
To begin with, by asking your father-in-law to give more categorical
answers you certainly ignore the fact that we don’t control
the spirits according to our wishes. They answer when they want
and how they want to, and often, how they can respond. Their
freedom of action is even greater than when alive and they are
better equipped to respond to any moral pressure that we might
try to put on them. The best proof of identity are given spontaneously,
following their wishes or derived from the circumstances,
and in the majority of the cases it is a waste of time to provoke
them. Your relative has unequivocally demonstrated his identity,
according to your opinion. It is then likely that he will consider
unnecessary, and rightfully so, questions destined to satisfy the
curiosity of persons who are indifferent to him. He could then
answer, as other spirits have done in similar cases, asking back: -
what is the interest in asking me these things that you know the
answer? – I will add still that the state of perturbation and suffering
of the spirit must turn such investigation into a painstaking
process, in the same way that someone would try to force a patient that can hardly think and speak to give us details of their
lives. It would certainly be a lack of respect for their condition.
Regarding your expected result, it would be certainly inexistent.
The proof of identity that was given has an even greater
value for the very reason of having been spontaneous and that
there wasn’t anything pointing to a particular direction. If the
disbelievers are not satisfied by that, they would not be either by
questions that could give rise to suspicion of complicity. There
are people who would not be convinced by anything. They
would see you father-in-law with their own eyes, saying that you
would be victimized by some sort of hallucination. The best one
can do is to leave them in peace and do not waste time with useless
words. We can only feel sorry for them since sooner or later
they will learn on their own the cost of having denied the light
sent by God. It is particularly against those that God’s severity
is manifested.
Two more words Sir, regarding your request to have the evocation
done on the same day that we received your letter. Evocations
are not done merely by waving a wand; the spirits don’t always
respond to our appeal. They must be willing and available to do
so. Furthermore, it is also necessary to have a convenient medium
with the required skills; that the medium is available at the moment;
that the spirit feels a friendly environment, etc. These are
all conditions that cannot always be met and that are necessary to
attend to in order to carry out serious work.”
